Archive for the ‘La Salle II roadster’ tag

Just one General Motors Motorama dream car is enough to draw sizable crowds, so imagine what four of the Fifties flashmobiles would do when gathered in one place. Such a sight doesn’t take place that often, but will next month at the Geneva Concours d’Elegance.

Two of the four are Motorama siblings from the 1955 season: One is the La Salle II roadster, recently restored with its non-functional fuel-injected dual-overhead-camshaft, aluminum-block V-6 still in place (and now powered by a small electric motor). Penned and shaped by Carl Renner, on Harley Earl’s design staff, it was reportedly intended as an early study on possible lines for the 1957 Corvette. That car’s been restored, unlike its companion, the La Salle II four-door sedan, with suicide rear doors and 13-inch wheels. It will be displayed in the condition it was found by dream-car collector Joe Bortz, who owns all four cars and rescued both La Salles from the Warhoops junkyard, located in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Also on display will be the 1955 Chevrolet Biscayne, another takeoff on the four-door La Salle concept, which Bortz restored by replicating its one-off frame. It bears surprisingly Corvette-like side scallops and a Corvair-reminiscent tail treatment. The fourth is the 1953 Buick Wildcat I, the first of three such concept cars bearing that name introduced in successive years. Envisioned as a possible competitor for the Ford Thunderbird, it was the first Buick to wear a fiberglass body.

The Geneva Concours d’Elegance will take place August 25 on Third Street in downtown Geneva, Illinois. For more information, visit GenevaConcours.net.

Back in 1988, the Warhoops Salvage Yard, located in Sterling Heights, Michigan, became the center of the automotive world when it was announced that four prototype/dream cars from the famed GM Motorama displays of the mid-Fifties had been discovered at the facility. Long thought to have been destroyed in 1958, the Chevrolet Biscayne, La Salle II roadster, La Salle II sedan and Cadillac Eldorado Brougham Town Car somehow remained out of the public eye – yet almost right under its nose – for 30 years.

That’s not to say they remained in good condition, or even in one piece. The Biscayne and the La Salle II roadster had been cut into pieces; in fact the former was on top of the latter in the yard, and after concept car collector Joe Bortz liberated them all from Warhoops, it took several return trips to excavate the missing pieces of the cars. Bortz reassembled both the Biscayne and La Salle II roadster for the 2008 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, and while the former has since been restored, the La Salle II roadster only recently emerged from restorer Marty Martino’s Martino Coachworks in Gum Springs, Virginia.

The La Salle II roadster does feature one significant departure from its original configuration. GM specified an aluminum block, double overhead-camshaft, fuel-injected V-6 for the roadster and while its engineers did indeed build the engine and install it in the roadster for the Motorama shows, they never got it running. While the non-functional engine remains with the roadster, Bortz decided to convert the car to electric power, enabling it to drive on and off concours greens. Bortz has put together a couple videos with more photos of the roadster and information on its restoration.

GM photo of the 1955 La Salle II roadster prototype, later displayed at the GM Motorama at the Waldorf Astoria.

The restored La Salle II roadster will make its public debut the weekend of March 8-10 at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, where the La Salle II sedan will also be on display. For more information on the concours, visit AmeliaConcours.org

Joe Bortz’s Chevrolet Biscayne concept car will make its first public appearance in 53 years at Pebble Beach.

Among the dreamy offerings on the green at Pebble Beach August 17 will be a couple of dream cars from GM’s past, the La Salle II Roadster and the Chevrolet Biscayne.

What makes the presence of these cars remarkable is that they were destroyed by GM after doing a tour of duty on GM’s Motorama. Or so GM thought…

“A GM executive was required to watch each of the dream cars get cut into pieces and crushed,” said Joe Bortz, who has made a name for himself hunting down and rebuilding old concept vehicles. “The GM exec took the La Salle Roadster and Biscayne to the junkyard, and he figured the guys at the junkyard would finish the job properly, so he took off early to go Christmas shopping. The junkyard workers never crushed the LaSalle, instead leaving it in many pieces.”

The Biscayne’s chassis was crushed, but the junkyard owner managed to save all the pieces of the original body. “I felt like an automotive archeologist,” said Bortz, who first showed some of his concept cars on the upper lawn at Pebble Beach in 1989 and 1990, drawing a crowd that couldn’t believe any of the cars still existed. “I had to dig pieces out of the ground. The body of the car was fiberglass, so it didn’t oxidize, but other remaining parts were almost hopeless. The body had to be glued back together from all the bits and pieces; it was like resurrecting a dinosaur.”

General Motors will also be bringing nearly a dozen dream cars that the company itself has saved, and these cars will join the Bortz Collection and Motorama treasures owned by other collectors during the Concours’ celebration of the General Motors Centennial.

“These Motorama cars fit perfectly with Pebble Beach’s history of showing only the rarest vehicles, and they allow us to emphasize the importance of preserving our automotive history,” said Sandra Kasky Button, chairman of the concours. “These and other historical treasures from Motorama demonstrate the forward-thinking that led GM to the front of the pack. Joe Bortz has somehow managed to rescue and resurrect concept cars from that era, allowing us to see the sometimes-radical GM designs that influenced industry styling for decades.”

This year’s Pebble Beach will mark the first time the Biscayne has been shown publicly since 1955. The “junkyard fresh” La Salle II Roadster has been seen in public only a couple of times since 1955. In addition to the Harley Earl-led stylists, GM engineers got involved in creating this car. The La Salle II was equipped with an aluminum-block, lightweight V-6, double overhead cam, fuel-injected engine and independent rear suspension. While innovations of this type were features that would appear in European cars in the ’50s and ’60s, GM would not incorporate them for decades.

First conducted in 1950, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance has grown to become the world’s premier celebration of the automobile. Only the most beautiful and rare cars are invited to appear on the famed 18th fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links, and connoisseurs of art and style flock to see these masterpieces. Charitable donations raised by the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance now total over $10 million.
For more information about Bortz’s exploits, read the story that appeared about him in a 2006 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.

(This post originally appeared in the August 7, 2008, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)